Computer security vulnerabilities come in all shapes and sizes; resultantly, computer security strategy must be varied and diverse to protect against exploitation of those vulnerabilities. Phishing is a particularly interesting challenge for computer security implementation because it is not solely a technological problem, as phishing relies on exploitation of a vulnerability not easily rectified—human weakness.
Attackers commonly register “lookalike” domain names that are similar to a target domain name associated with an organization that an attacker is trying to phish. For example, a lookalike domain for “priceline.com” might substitute one character for another similar-looking character (e.g. “priceline.com”). “Lookalike” domain names can fool individuals into believing that content from those domains is legitimate, and in turn expose serious security issues.
While computer network users can be trained to recognize and report phishing attacks, it is difficult for such training to result in sufficient protection; after all, only one user's mistake is needed for a phishing attack to succeed.
Thus, there is a need in the computer security field to create new and useful methods for preventing phishing activity and related cyber intrusions. This invention provides such new and useful methods.